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Kenzie Martin
'''AvenG: ? Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi Aven. It’s Kenzie AvenG: Oh. Kenzie M? Heart_Shaped_Pupil: That me. - Glow-worm P.7Glare 3.2 is a hero known publicly as '''Lookout and formerly as Optics. Personality For better or, often, for worse Kenzie is a people person. She likes making connections and helping people, to the point that a former teammate of hers called it a "people addiction".Houndstooth looked toward me and Tristan. “There was a time, about a year back, where I was talking to a teammate. He said a food addiction was the only addiction that you couldn’t go cold turkey on. You can’t not eat, and that’s hard, when the addiction makes dealing with food in moderation next to impossible. Immediately, I thought of Kenzie. I thought, within a second or two of him saying that, he was wrong, there was another addiction like that. You say she’s human, but she’s a people addict. She’s addicted to humans. You can’t expect a young girl to not interact with people, and you can’t expect her to deal with people in moderation.” “And you think the way to solve that is to… minimize that interaction to the barest bones?” I asked. “Over months and years, gradually loosen that belt. If the therapist okays it.” I sighed. “She’s doing exceptionally well,” Tristan said. “You could hold a gun to my head, and I wouldn’t say she lacked a work ethic,” Houndstooth said. “She’s brilliant for her age, she’s good-hearted in her way, and she doesn’t deserve a thousandth of what she’s gone through. It’s heartbreaking and worrying.” ... “Powers and agents don’t even really play into this,” Houndstooth said. “If you took away her powers and the influence of her agent today, I’d give you all the same warnings tomorrow.” - Excerpt from Shade 4.4 Kenzie tended to think everybody and everything was "pretty neat", which could devalue her compliments somewhat.Flare 2.7 She was almost always ebullient and enthusiastic, even painfully so, but when discussing her fears she spoke more slowly and deliberately and tended to talk passively or passive-aggressively. She tended to smile when she was upset, feeling that it bothered people less than if she were to cry.“I always smile when I’m upset or bothered,” Kenzie answered. She swallowed hard. “That’s just how I am. It’s easier than crying, it doesn’t bother people as much.” “What do you do when you’re happy?” “I don’t smile, I guess,” Kenzie said. - Excerpt from Interlude 7.x II She felt that she tended to drive almost everyone away as a result of a lack of boundaries. She would go to extreme lengths to please others and receive positive reactions while often endangering herself in the process, to the point of losing hair and vomiting from stress. Examples of this include devoting all her spare time to watch camera feeds, pulling consecutive all-nighters to work on school projects, and at one point volunteering to be a replacement for a woman's dead daughter after seeing it online. Kenzie sat in her chair at the table-turned desk, the projector showing the camera’s image of Cedar Point. “Did you skip class to get here as quick as you did?” I asked. “No,” Kenzie said, not turning around. “I went to class, I stopped in at study hall at the start of lunch and asked if I could go early. They said okay. You can call if you need to check.” “I don’t need to check,” I said. “You’re honest.” “Sorry for all the emails. Sveta yelled at me. Well, she didn’t yell, but she came close. I sent her almost as many as I sent you.” “Did you eat lunch?” “It’s in my bag, in case I get hungry.” “Too nervous?” I asked. She turned around in her computer chair and smiled. “Yeah.” “Houndstooth wanted to make sure you were okay first. Making sure you weren’t getting too much homework,” I said. “He had some tips about how we should make sure you aren’t tinkering yourself to the bone after hours.” “It helps sometimes. Distracting myself with it.” “We should figure out a balance. He was suspicious you were staying up late, watching and rewatching camera feeds.” “When I can’t sleep it’s nice to be able to watch that stuff with my laptop beside me in the dark room. I doze off.” I nodded. “Did he say the embarrassing stuff?” “I don’t know what qualifies as embarrassing,” I said. “Problems with teachers, school. Tristan and Ashley defended you pretty fiercely.” “And you?” “I just want to figure out what needs to be figured out,” I said. “So everyone’s happy and healthy, and the team stays together and positive overall. I shared some of the good stuff I know of.” “Did he mention the old lady?” “I’m not sure.” “She was on the internet and she wanted a replacement for her dead daughter and I almost went with her, and then later we started thinking she killed her daughter. Embarrassing.” - Excerpt from Shade 4.4 Heart_Shaped_Pupil's typing style was unusually sloppy,Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so x-ited to b working with u. Strange_Mammal: @ K / Heart_Shaped_Pupil… Strange_Mammal: …type like a grown up… Strange_Mammal: …my eyes are already bleeding - Glow-worm P.3 with lots of typos and extensive use of emojis and abbreviations. She displayed some familiarity with PHO's search function, but seemingly less than Strange Mammal's.of5: Wanted k actually. Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yuss! \♥/ of5: you know this site. I want search terms to find some people. Articles, anything else. Would need to cover a lot of bases. Normal site search limits # of terms. Heart_Shaped_Pupil: uh. that hard. you want packaged search string Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i can try Questionable_Mammal: you’re looking for others in your set? of5: yes Questionable_Mammal: I can make attempt. gimme time. you might want to fine tune after. - Glow-worm P.4 Strange_Mammal claimed that K would almost certainly check how long Mangled_Wings had been online and catch her in a minor lie.Strange_Mammal: for your information… Strange_Mammal: …others can see time you spend online on your profile. you spent longer than one hour… Strange_Mammal: …you’ve been online all day. Mangled_Wings: I am at the library. Something to do with that, I’d think. Strange_Mammal: it doesn’t work that way. I am 95% sure. Strange_Mammal: there is no need to lie, A Strange_Mammal: the reason for this project is supposed to be we know each other Strange_Mammal: K will find out if she does not already know. she pays attention to those things - Glow-worm P.3 Kenzie was familiar with details regarding the true nature of passengers.Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If you think about it, with powers and all, the center of your being could include the vast monster in another dimension that’s all hooked up into you. Passenger stuff. The center of mass could be in the middle of an alien god monster the size of a mountain or moon. I imagine it has the energy of a small star stored in it. - Glow-worm P.7 Due to her young age, she has a hard time grasping that othersKid Win mentions, when modifying the earbud with Armsmaster’s lie detector, that anything he does will naturally be less elegant and the work will suffer for it. The same applies for anything in regular use with non-tinkers. - comment by Wildbow on Scourge 19.6. would have a hard time using her tinker technology.Tristan was still fiddling with Kenzie’s remote for the projector box. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why isn’t it easier to move forward and back in time?” “Because the box doesn’t perceive time, you dummy. It perceives images.” “Why not have it perceive things like time, so you can go backward and forward in time without doing… whatever arcane thing you’re doing right now?” “Because if it perceived time,” Kenzie said, patiently, her focus on the smartphone remote, “Then it wouldn’t perceive images. And that would be a dumb thing for a projector box that works with images. Dummy.” “You can stop calling me a dummy now.” “I will if you stop being dumb. This stuff is obvious.” - Excerpt from Glare 3.3 Relationships Baltimore Protectorate Kenzie had largely alienated the members of her old Wards team, a fact she regretted. However, she did discuss the possibility of one day working with her old leader again. Breakthrough Kenzie is a member of a therapy group that primarily communicates via PHO. She professed to be an admirer of Ashley,Glow-worm P.3 and had agreed to work with them as an independent villain at a later date, although she was initially unsure if Ashley was serious about this. Mangled_Wings considered them one of the few people worthy of her attention and investment. She claimed a possible romantic interest in Chris Elman.Glow-worm P.6 In conversation with him, HSP revealed that she had been observing Mammal's private conversations with other users. Chris had known they were being watched for some time, noting that their stalker was too skilled not to be watching their activities on PHO.Glow-worm P.6 Parents Kenzie keeps them in makeshift 'rehab program' under threat of sending them to prison again. They hate her enough to try to kill her regularly, despite known dead man's switch. Appearance Civilian Kenzie was a young black "tween" with long skinny limbs and large eyes, proportionately to her size. She had "kinky", glossy black hair. She was the same height as Chris. When she was happy, she would bounce one foot, like a dog wagging it's tail,Flare 2.6 as well as other types of fidgeting. On one occasion, she wore her hair in two buns at the back and with a star-shaped hairpin to keep it in place, with a blue corduroy dress and sequinned shirt. Her general appearance was immaculate, with carefully-chosen clothes that were freshly ironed, fashionable and matching (in colour and with a running "star" theme throughout), and hair that looked like it had taken at least half an hour. She noted that she wanted to look good because she was meeting Victoria for the first time. She had an inch-long scar on the side of her face over one of her cheekbones, due to her parents. Normally, she used her hairpins to project over them and hide it,She double-tapped the hairpin. There was a faint tingle as things shifted. The projection at her face dropped away. Victoria approached, bending down. “Kenzie-” Kenzie shrugged. “-Really truly, I hope you don’t mind my saying it, but the scar is barely visible.” The projection was down. The hairpins had one job, to cast a projection on one area of Kenzie’s face. Her hand moved up to her cheekbone, and found the groove. It was about an inch long. - Excerpt from Interlude 7.x II or else cover it up.Kenzie was bundled up, with pink earmuffs, hair not done up in buns, but parted, the vast majority of her hair at one side of her face, along her temple and cheek. She had a black coat, with a nice looking flannel scarf, pink and black – more bundling than was necessary for the weather. - Excerpt from Polarize 10.1 Cape Originally she wore a type of optical camouflage as Optics along with a high tech mask and oversized gloves.Glare 3.2I could see Kenzie. She looked tiny, a singular lens dominating her mask. Her arms were very skinny, and her hands were buried in gauntlets that made each hand look the size of her head, each with a lens on the back. “There you are, as Optics. With camera hands?” “I called them mugshots. They weren’t very good and they never let me use them outside of training. If you squint, you can see my flash gun.” “I can. That’s really cool,” I said. “The old team.” “I miss them. There’s Avian, Stungun, Keychain, Blush, and there’s Houndstooth. And that’s Mayday, you see, and Turtleshell, Aerobat… and some I never even got to have conversations with. They were always busy.”- Excerpt from Torch 7.10 Later after taking the identify of Looksee, Kenzie wore a green jumpsuit and helmet which also had various settings.Shade 4.5 She later redesigned her helmet, removing its built-in buns and allowing her hair to hang free.“There’s not much I can do with my stuff broken,” Lookout said. She undid clasps on her helmet and pulled it off- the helmet itself had been re-styled, doing away with the buns. Even with more allowance in the helmet’s shape to let her hair hang free, it now stuck to her face and scalp with sweat. - Excerpt from Polarize 10.3 Abilities and Powers Looksee is a tinker who has stated she specializes in cameras and immobile terminals, with little ability for offense or defense.“Are you hiding a jetpack inside that raincoat, or are those rocket boots?” I asked. “I wish,” Kenzie said. “I can’t do that stuff. I make cameras and inconveniently big boxes. My best stuff is inconveniently big, box-shaped cameras.” “Big boxes?” I asked. “The term in my file is emplacements. Terminals, tech, and computers big enough they’re hard to move around. Like turrets, but I can’t really make good weapons or defensive things.” - Excerpt from Flare 2.7 Her former team leader Houndstooth, however, described her as a (counter)surveillance tinker. Her power was useful, so much so that she worried she might be kidnapped by people seeking to exploit it.Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you’re a smart guy and you were a good leader. you know how these things work. you know my power has its uses. others would kidnap me for it. I am offering myself to you and you would be stupid to turn me down. - Glow-worm P.7 Chris stated that she would make a terrifying villain should she choose to. Kenzie was able to construct a parallel Parahumans Online server, giving her a faster connection and allowing her to view private information on the site. She also constructed a group of relatively sophisticated chatbots (see Treefort above), although she stated that this was not her specialty, and she was not capable of creating true AI. She claimed that she would likely be able to construct immobile teleportation terminals, although they would require regular maintenance.“Kind of confident,” she said, sounding anything but. “I haven’t done teleportation or breaking movement devices before, but if I made it a series of emplacements and built them big, then if I traveled once a week or so to visit the send-receives and make sure they don’t break down, it might work.” - excerpt from Flare 2.7 She could fix her devices and make them work better - Excerpt from Torch 7.5 simply by hitting them,I looked at Kenzie. She hit a button on her camera. When it didn’t boot, she hammered it with her hand a few times. The projector came on. The two missing members of our group appeared. Ashley was projected, her lower body a static black dress. She’d be sitting on a bus right now, a laptop beside her, to capture her face and anything she said. - Excerpt from Pitch 6.7 likely assisted by her Tinker power.If you have a tinker who makes armor/powersuits that have white hot metal as a key feature, yes, he could theoretically equip his teammates, but so much of it is intuitive that it's hard for that tinker to really specify some of the particulars. There are a lot of little things that go wrong in the field, or things you need to adapt to. Did a cape slime the entire battlefield? Maybe that affects coolant venting, which affects the cremation fist's charge-up rate. That affects the hyperthermal reactor which means the entire suit starts feeling sluggish. Really easy to fix if it's the tinker, but nobody else will have a clue of the big picture. Did something get broken? If it's not the tinker using it, then it's going to be broken until the tinker gets their hands on it again or you might even have to abandon it. If the tinker's in the pilot's seat, then it might be a simple adjustment here or cinching something shut there. Generally when gear is given out, it's heavily restricted in capability ("Okay, well, it's the suit I usually use, but I had to adjust the dampeners so it's slower, weaker, and you don't have access to the meat hammer or related tech"), it's a oneshot thing ("Press this, then this, aim using this"), or both. - Wildbow on reddit. She claimed that she could probably defuse a bomb, provided she was there to do it and not over a phone or similar.Pitch 6.9 Kenzie took pride in her skill at paperwork when she was with the Wards. Equipment Kenzie had a tinker workshop she used to work on her technology, first located in Baltimore and later at her home.“They weren’t a horror story for me. They said I was being moved around too much and I needed to go somewhere to stay. Not going to the fun camps and training sucked, but I went back to Baltimore, and I got to set up my workshop, fi-nuh-ly.” “Workshop, huh?” “Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada spoke up. She still sat at the desk. “You might want to be mindful of what you reveal. I’ll get into that more when things get started, but take a moment and think before revealing things that might tie into your cape identity, or identifying parts of your background.” “Yes, Mrs. Yamada,” Kenzie said. Then she leaned close to me, whispering, “I took a moment to think and I think I’m safe telling you I’m a tinker.” - excerpt from Flare 2.5“All caught up. Stir fry for dinner, I’m going to pick up broccoli, and my workshop is warming up for later.” “You’ve got a workshop, like a proper tinker,” I said. “Absolutely,” Kenzie said, dead serious. - excerpt from Flare 2.7 It may have been the same workshop used to maintain Sveta's prosthetics.Questionable_Mammal: …she will be back I think. We still waiting on S. Technical issues. She’s @ workshop later this week… - Excerpt from Glow-worm P.4 Her workshop needed to "warm up" before she could use it, so she would call ahead to have her parents start the process. History Background Both of her parents are high-functioning psychopaths. Once their abusive behavior was revealed Kenzie was send into foster care. Aerobat talked to her when she was placed in state care for the first time and offered some souvenirs and his contacts. Later, she called him immediately after her trigger event.Interlude 7.x II It is known that Kenzie bounced around foster homes before and after her trigger. Her trigger was a result of her recontacting her first foster parent, which she previously unwittingly framed and alienated, while trying to ensure adoption. Given her over gregariousness she has been known to get into several very embarrassing incidents with people in both her civilian and cape life. Despite all of this Kenzie was considered a prospective candidate for a Watchdog project. She was put under strict regiment of camps and exercises with frequent relocation, which brought attention of Youth Guard. Youth Guard forced PRT to stop frequent travels and over-training.Flare 2.6 From that moment in the spring of 2013, at ten years old, Kenzie was assigned the Baltimore Wards team alongside capes named Aven (or AvenG), Houndstooth, 10-59 and Pigeonhole. This ended abruptly with Gold Morning.Flare 2.5 Gold Morning She was stated to have participated in Gold Morning and "actually helped".Heart_Shaped_Pupil: iv’e grown up some Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was there for the end of the world Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i did stuff. i actually really helped Houndstooth: Absolutely - Glow-worm P.7 It's safe to assume that, as all involved tinkers, she participated in the building of inter-dimensional cannon, that finished off Zion's true body. Glow-worm At some point, she met up with the other members of the Chatroom group. When she asked to meet Strange_Mammal privately and he refused, Kenzie revealed that she had been surveilling them and asked about details of their power. Kenzie used her Treefort bots to track Tattletale and Weld as assistance for her new teammates (of5 and Strange_Mammal, respectively). Shortly afterward, Parahumans Online moderators discovered traffic from her Treefort (see above) and asked her to shut the shop down, since it provided undue stress to PHO network. When she volunteered to donate her DYI Parahumans Online server, they requested she shut that down as well because of security reasons.She asks if they want to use her server, and gets an alarmed response: use of a server the way she describes it could give her a 'man in the middle' view and access to things. No - offer definitely refused. - the PHO staff member leaves. - Synopsis by Wildbow Early Ward Met with a new coach and had a lot of fun practicing. Was not looking forward to having her story told by someone else. She was instrumental in the Mathers Compound Assault both postively in helping the capture of Mama Mathers, and negativly by cutting off Tattletale when the thinker wouldn't respond to her texts.Pitch 6.8 Was able to get victoria to agree to come to dinner with her family. Post-Fallen Fall Was instrumental in saving portals. Tried to use a doctored video to save Ashley from a trial. Was able to use her past-camera to find a lead on the portal sabotage that acted as impetus for Breakthrough to stay together. The group's investigation took them to Earth N and the court of Lord of Loss. Before the group, calling itself Breakthrough, announced themselves Kenzie changed her cape name to Lookout at the last minute. She later had Victoria come to her house but her parents embarrassed her.Torch 7.10 Trivia *Kenzie displays behaviors symptomatic of an attachment disorder known as Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder or DSED. Depending on when her behavior started (i.e before the age of five), she could be reasonably diagnosed, and she could have been given appointments with Dr. Yamada. As a corollary, given Tristan and Ashley defense of Kenzie's behavior and improvement to Houndstooth Kenzie may actually be fine. This could only be their opinion though and the improvement is due to treatment from therapy with Yamada and similar.Shade 4.4 - This whole chapter alludes to Kenzie's behavior, which shows her intense 'addiction' to people and interactions. It also shows how Tristan and Ashley respond to it. Fanart Gallery LsBYWB.png| Looksee helmet by Wildbow |link=https://i.imgur.com/nnoc46t.png rjzAnNiZ1jFbLNG8M4NlnfbFUmpla-p0kUuo7qKOl28.png|Illustration by MugaSofer|link=https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/7xqev4/have_a_looksee/ 9fqxp94oee611.jpg|Illustration by Aerryi|link=https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/8u2zg6/newest_interlude_fucked_me_up/ Navigation Category:Characters Category:Females Category:Heroes Category:Tinker